A beautiful, aristocratic young woman whose life at the peak of Imperial Russian society leaves her lonely and unfulfilled...a dashing military man with a noble title and a passionate heart...an affair that begins as a private infatuation, but soon scandalizes an entire city...
Count Leo Tolstoy's classic romantic novel, Anna Karenina, paints an unforgettable portrait of two people who lose themselves in the throes of a love so powerful that it comes to dominate their very existences, changing forever their friendships, families and futures.
Their scandalous affair is contrasted in the parallel tale of a disillusioned but wealthy landowner and his marriage to a jilted society girl. Although their union begins tentatively, over time it deepens and flourishes, bringing the pair happiness and fulfillment beyond their dreams.
Now, this timeless story is brought to the motion picture screen in an entirely new production, filmed on location in St. Petersburg, Russia, and starring SOPHIE MARCEAU ("Braveheart") in the title role and SEAN BEAN ("Patriot Games") as her illicit lover, Count Vronsky. ALFRED MOLINA plays the once-jaded Levin and MIA KIRSHNER portrays his radiant wife, Kitty. JAMES FOX is Karenin, Anna's wealthy but distant husband, who struggles with her infidelity.
"Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina," an Icon Production, is directed by BERNARD ROSE ("Immortal Beloved") from his own screenplay. Academy Award-winning producer BRUCE DAVEY ("Braveheart") produces and STEPHEN McEVEETY executive produces.
The distinguished behind-the-camera team includes production designer JOHN MYHRE, director of photography DARYN OKADA, editor VICTOR DUBOIS and costume designer MAURIZIO MILLENOTTI. SIR GEORG SOLTI conducts the ST. PETERSBURG PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA in selections from Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony, "Swan Lake" and "Eugene Onegan," as well as music by Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev and several traditional Russian folk songs.
Supporting roles are played by DANNY HUSTON as Stiva, SASKIA WICKHAM as Dolly and FIONA SHAW as Lydia Ivanova. Warner Bros. will distribute "Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina" in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, and Icon Entertainment International will oversee international distribution.
About the Story...
Count Leo Tolstoy's tale of love and morality follows the doomed romance between the beautiful, well-born Anna Karenina and Count Alexei Vronsky. Anna, though a wife and mother, plunges into a tempestuous affair with the dashing Vronsky, shocking Russian society and rending her family apart.
The progress of their liaison is contrasted with the romance and marriage of two of their friends, Levin and Kitty, who seem an unlikely match at first but find increasing happiness and fulfillment as their relationship deepens over time. The desperation and despair of one couple and the ever-growing warmth and devotion of the other trace two separate choices in love and reveal the consequences of each.
Although the story of Anna Karenina is not autobiographical, it does deeply reflect Tolstoy's own beliefs and his desire to impart these beliefs to others. In many ways, the character of Levin is one with whom Tolstoy identified closely, and Levin's experiences as he is transformed by his love and marriage to Kitty were a message to readers of the novel.
Tolstoy, the son of wealthy Russian landowners, wrote Anna Karenina after achieving worldwide distinction for War and Peace. An educated and cosmopolitan man, Tolstoy had studied Oriental languages and law at the University of Kazan and then led a life of pleasure until 1851, when he fought as a member of an artillery regiment in the Crimean War. After participating in the defense of Sebastopol, Tolstoy wrote The Sebastopol Stories, which established his reputation.
He married in 1862 and had 13 children over the next 15 years. During that time he managed his vast estates; studied and implemented educational methods in order to help the local peasant population; and wrote his two greatest works: War and Peace (1865-68) and Anna Karenina (1874-76). Imperial Russia was in its heyday during this period, opening new cultural and commercial doors between Russia and Western Europe, and bringing Tolstoy's master works to an international audience.
However, A Confession, which Tolstoy wrote from 1879-92, marked a change in his life and outlook; he became an extreme rationalist and moralist. In a series of pamphlets he wrote after 1880, Tolstoy rejected the Church and State, renounced the demands of the flesh and denounced ownership of private property. His writing earned him many followers in Russia and abroad, but also generated strong opposition. In 1901, Tolstoy was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church.
In an ironic parallel to the end of his tragic heroine, Tolstoy died in 1910 during a journey, at the small railway station of Astapovo in Russia. It was a scant seven years before the Bolshevik revolution that transformed Russian history and politics.
About the Production...
Writer-director Bernard Rose says that he is glad to have encountered Anna Karenina for the first time as an adult. "When you mention this novel, everyone nods and says, 'Oh, yes, I've read it,' but when you ask them to be more specific, they admit they were supposed to read it in school, but few really did," says Rose. "When I discovered this marvelous story as an adult I could experience it as something fresh and new; it was riveting."
Rose was directing "Immortal Beloved," about the life of Beethoven, when he became interested in Tolstoy's work. "Tolstoy had written The Kreutzer Sonata, which I used as a reference in 'Immortal Beloved,'" recalls Rose. "It was my first exposure to Tolstoy's writing and its power blew me away. I developed an appetite for more of his writing, and Anna Karenina seemed a natural next choice."
Rose became enthralled by the scope and intensity of the novel, and particularly about what it revealed of Tolstoy's own inner self. "I immediately thought this would make a wonderful movie because the characters were so psychologically powerful. And because of the parallel stories of Anna and Vronsky versus Levin and Kitty, it seemed as if Tolstoy had, by the end of the book, explored virtually all the possibilities of romantic life.
"Levin is, essentially, Tolstoy himself," explains the director. "His life is factually just like Tolstoy's -- he's a wealthy rural landowner, disenchanted with society but full of intellectual passions. I actually used part of Tolstoy's writing from A Confession, which is autobiographical, as the opening for this movie, because it merges the novelist and his character's temperaments and outlooks so perfectly.
"On the other hand, Anna is also a personification of Tolstoy -- she represents his sensual, physical side, the side he feared and wrestled with all his life. Tolstoy not only married and had 13 children, but he also had many children out of wedlock; he constantly struggled to merge his desires with his ideals."
Once Rose became interested in filming Anna Karenina, he began watching versions of the story that had already been filmed. "Of course, I saw the Garbo version, which has many wonderful moments, but the story had a central flaw for me," he says. "Neither it nor any other filmed version gave much consideration to Levin and Kitty's part of the story; there was no parallelism, and much of the meaning of the whole book was lost."
As Rose considered this, he became committed to writing the script for his movie himself. "I went to see Bruce Davey and Mel Gibson at Icon Productions," he recounts. "We had worked together very comfortably on 'Immortal Beloved,' and when I told them about my plans for writing and directing a film of Anna Karenina, they were immediately interested. So I went home and began writing."
Says Bruce Davey, "Bernard had just done a very fine job for us with 'Immortal Beloved' and he was excited about making Anna Karenina his next film. It was clear that the time was right for a story like this one -- just look at the recent screen success of Jane Austen's novels.
"Anna Karenina is a very powerful story set at a dramatic period in Russia's history. Despite all of its formality, this period is probably the time that Americans and Europeans feel most comfortable with -- a time when Russia was at its most cosmopolitan for the privileged few who could live as aristocrats. And the story itself is a great classic, one that can be created again and again on the screen."
Icon Productions gave Rose the go-ahead and he began finalizing his screenplay as he and Davey considered casting the roles.
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© 1997 Warner Bros.
